In my day, you learnt your times tables by rote, and you knew them forever afterwards.

[ScareyCaligulaCorday]

[Old fart emoticon]

But now, my DS's teacher tells me that as she asks random tables, there's no point learning by rote.

But I thought that was the point of learning by rote - so that if somone asks you what seven times six is, you can instantly remember that it's 42 because of chanting it like a song - you don't have to work it out.

DS has been trying to learn his 2 times tables for 4 weeks and still doesn't know them. How can I teach him?

Is "berr" a funny place that fish go at night?

Can I just say that as a maths teacher in FE, it drives me insane when 17 year olds cannot instinctivly know what 6x6 is without counting on their fingers.

Its a bit like calculus in my opinion. Teach them how to do it first, then once they know what to do, teach them the theory behind it. There's a lot to be said for rote learning.

Also with the 9 x table all the answers add up to 9 (up to 9x10 anyway)

psml at Mrs Redsky senior using algebra to solve everyday problems

Mine struggled with them until we started doing them in rythmned triplets e.g. 7, 14, 21 (pause) 28, 35, 42 (pause) etc. It helps to pretend to be drumming while doing it! This method has worked like a charm. When the table sequence is memorised you can then get them to overlay the 1 x, 2 x etc.

Message withdrawn

i must be really thick, ive never heard of learning by rote & have no idea if thats what we did or not when i was at school (im 33) i dont know my tables now & i didnt know them when i was at school either

firestorm, if you chanted your tables like this

One two is two,
Two twos are four
Three twos are six

etc. that's learning by rote.

oh right. no i didnt do that.